Rocket League's new challenges will focus on team plays

Recently we sat down with Rocket League's game director Scott Rudi to learn more about what's coming next, how the studio's been approaching anti-selfish plays and toxic behaviour and, of course, the upcoming challenge system addition.

Changes are coming with Rocket League's Rocket Pass 3, the tier-based reward system for the popular game. Rocket Pass, which lists tiers that the player progresses through by levelling up with just match experience points will be receiving the addition of new challenges when it releases with the Rocket Pass on April 17. The Pass, with its two tracks one of which is a free track that every player can unlock items from by just going up a tier with 70 tiers of items, skins, toppers, banners, decryptors as well as a premium track. The premium track costs ten keys and boosts the frequency of items gained from tiering up all the way from tier 1 to 70. Beyond 70 is what the developers call pro tiers and these add painted, certified and special edition variants of select items from the premium track.

When talking about the challenge system, Rudi had plenty to share: "Adding the challenge system, one of the things we wanted to do with this was making sure that players would keep engaging week after week instead of playing a bunch at the beginning and at the very end of Rocket Pass. We found that a lot of players would go a bit rush-heavy with the Rocket Pass, so we wanted to provide a reason for them to come back several times during the week, just play more regularly and have an easier time to get through Rocket Pass".

The challenges being put in place will make it easier for players to rank up: "All of these challenges, as you complete them, award you tier points and each tier of Rocket Pass has ten tier point slots. Every time you gain a player level you gain ten tier points, so every time you gain a level you also gain a new tier. What we're doing with the challenges is we're letting you go even faster through the tiers, so every time you complete a challenge you get additional tier points. We want players to tier up further and faster so that they can get up to those pro tiers because that's what our dedicated players really want".

When Rocket Pass starts on April 17th, every week a new week of challenges will appear. Three free track challenges and three premium track challenges. You make progress to them all but you can only collect the rewards of the free challenges if you're not a premium player. What Psyonix has done is that even if you upgrade to premium down the line, the progress made will still count towards unlocking the premium rewards even after the weekly challenges reset.

They've also tweaked the challenges to be more team-based, such as challenges tackling assists and general team play. This will, in turn, result in less toxicity as well as less selfish plays.

As for the upcoming Esports Shop that launches on April 16, players will be able to rep their favourite esports teams with new decals, wheels and player banners. The featured teams are the following: Cloud9, Dignitas, Evil Geniuses, G2 Esports, Ghost Gaming, mousesports, NRG Esports, Rogue, Splyce, TSM, Team Vitality and each team will have two decals, one player banner and a variety of wheels that players can purchase.

The items will be timed, so make sure to check the availability in the shop to not miss your favourite team's featured items. To purchase the items you'll need to buy esports tokens which will be available in four different packs, 100, 600, 1200 and 2500.

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